The flamingo’s center of gravity was close to the inner knee where bones started to form the long column to the ground, giving the precarious-looking position remarkable stability. The bird’s distribution of weight, however, looked important for one-footed balance. The bones themselves don’t seem to have a strict on-off locking mechanism, though Ting has observed bony crests, double sockets and other features that could facilitate stable standing. What bends in the middle of the long flamingo leg is not a knee but an ankle (which explains why to human eyes a walking flamingo’s leg joint bends the wrong way). In flamingo anatomy, the hip and the knee lie well up inside the body. All of a sudden, the bird specimen settled naturally into one-legged lollipop alignment. “The ‘ah-ha!’ moment was when I said, ‘Wait, let’s look at it in a vertical position,’” Ting remembers. Deceased Caribbean flamingos a zoo donated to science gave a better view. Museum bones revealed features of the skeleton that might enhance stability, but bones alone didn’t tell the researchers enough. When a bird tucked its head onto its pillowy back and shut its eyes, the center of pressure made smaller adjustments (within a radius of 3.2 millimeters on average, compared with 5.1 millimeters when active). “Patience,” Ting says, was the key to any success in this experiment.Īs a flamingo standing on one foot shifted to preen a feather or joust with a neighbor, the instrument tracked wobbles in the foot’s center of pressure, the spot where the bird’s weight focused. Keepers at Zoo Atlanta hand-rearing the test subjects let researchers visit after feeding time in hopes of catching youngsters inclined toward a nap - on one leg on a machine. Ting and Young-Hui Chang of the Georgia Institute of Technology tested balance in fluffy young Chilean flamingos coaxed onto a platform attached to an instrument that measures how much they sway. A flamingo’s hip and knee lie inside the bird’s body. Translate that improbably long flamingo leg into human terms, and the visible part of the leg would be just the shin down. Therefore, it’s simply more likely they’re looking to save energy by standing on one leg.Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. “This means they already have an in-built mechanism for saving heat. They have a counter-current heat system, meaning they warm blood that’s returning from the foot to the body, and cools blood that’s leaving the body to the foot. “This is because flamingos, like most water birds, have very reduced blood vessels in their legs. “It’s been debated for a while, but the jury’s verdict is basically ‘that’s not probably the case,’” he says. While first appearing a watertight theory, scientists – including Rose – now argue this idea doesn’t have a leg to stand on. This thinking followed the idea that as the birds spent so much time in water, they needed to reduce the heat lost through their lower bodies. “Yet we can even see this behaviour in humans to some extent if they’re in a queue: people will rest more weight on one leg than the other.” A mallard standing on one leg © Getty imagesĪnother explanation that gained traction until a few years ago: flamingos raise one leg to conserve body heat. It just so happens that because flamingos have such long legs, we see it more,” says Rose. Ducks, geese, swans and flamingos are birds of a feather, using similar locking mechanisms in their legs to stay perfectly balanced. Interestingly, they aren’t the only animals to engage in this behaviour. The pinkest flamingos are the most aggressive, study finds.Sleeping on two legs would mean constantly maintaining your balance.” “If you’re a flamingo, you’re going to want to sleep on one leg as you can activate this locking mechanism and just stay there. This is because the ligaments and tendons in their legs can be locked in position – and that reduces any muscular effort to stay in one place. “Believe it or not, flamingos are more stable for long periods of time on one leg than they are on two. “It’s an energy-saving activity, basically,” explains Dr Paul Rose, zoologist at the University of Exeter. Why do flamingos stand on one leg?įundamentally, flamingos stand on one leg to avoid muscular fatigue. However, one explanation now stands head and shoulders above the rest. If not, it should be: the fuchsia-feathered birds adopt this unipedal stance for several hours each day, particularly when sleeping or enjoying a midday rest (what scientists genuinely refer to as ‘loafing’).īut why do flamingos perch on one leg? Even for experts, this hasn’t been an easy question to answer, with zoologists offering several theories across several decades. Picture a flamingo in your mind now and it’s probably A) fantastically pink, and B) standing on one leg.
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